


A Creekmas Carol

by indirectkissesiniceland



Category: South Park
Genre: Creek Secret Santa 2016, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, mentioned clutters and kaby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8970196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indirectkissesiniceland/pseuds/indirectkissesiniceland
Summary: Craig Tucker has forgotten the true meaning of Christmas. He's rich and successful, but also lonely and cold. Then the ghosts start showing up.





	1. Chapter 1

Thomas Tucker was dead as a door nail. In order for any magic, any wonder, to come of this story, that must be perfectly understood.

Not that his son cared much. Craig Tucker was a busy man. Nobody ever became executive director of a series of smash hit television shows by taking vacation days over an often-absent father who was now permanently absent. And nobody ever became executive director by the age of thirty, period.

Nobody but Craig Tucker.

He’d spent his twenty-eighth Christmas Eve bullied into attending the funeral by his little sister. A year later, here he was in his office where he wanted to be the first time around, Clyde perched on the armrest of the leather couch that was supposed to be for important company only.

“Off,” Craig said, waving him away. “You’ll break it.”

“You spent over a grand on this thing,” Clyde said cheerfully. “If it can’t hold my fine self, you should ask for your money back.”

“Would you stop wasting my time?” Craig rubbed his temples. “If you’re not going to do the job I hired you for, you’ll celebrate Christmas by losing it.”

“Alright, alright.” Clyde slid off the armrest onto the cushion, then, under Craig’s glare, slowly stood up and stepped away from the couch altogether. At one time, he might have said, “Nah, you love me too much,” but that had been a very long time ago. Craig had forgotten it, and Clyde mostly had, too, but the narrator thought the reader might find it an illuminating tidbit. “Got your messages.”

Craig crossed his arms against the edge of his desk, which had cost even more than the couch. “Read them.”

“One call from Mr. Marsh.” Clyde crinkled his nose, like addressing Stan as such was strange even after years of working together. “He…wants to adjust where his paycheck is deposited.”

“That’s a problem for HR, not me,” Craig said.

“Oh, I know,” Clyde said. He hesitated a second longer before adding, “Don’t you want to know why?”

“I couldn’t care less. Next message.”

“Well, his mom got laid off,” Clyde said anyway, “so he wants to send half his paycheck to her—”

“I said I didn’t care, Clyde. Next message.”

Anger got through where agitation didn’t. Clyde flinched back and flipped to the next page in his notepad. “Um, But—Mr. Stotch confirmed all the legal paperwork to feature Duchess on the show.” Duchess, for those readers who don’t watch cute pet programming, was a much sought-after, prizewinning, media darling Shiba Inu who was not only elegant in glossy magazine photos but cute on camera. Super cute. Back when he was doing grunt work, Craig would’ve had her agreed to the show in a week. Butters, bless his hardworking little heart, had taken three.

“What a nice sendoff that will be for him,” Craig said. Clyde’s fingers had been worrying the flipped-over page in his notebook, but they froze now. He looked up in slow motion.

“Craig…you wouldn’t…”

“It’s not working out. We can’t be waiting around for weeks to confirm an appearance on the show, especially a high-profile one.”

“But the show is booked up for the next month anyway! Duchess wouldn’t be appearing until February at the earliest.”

“At which point we will have a new account manager who will be competent enough to handle her,” Craig said. He reached into his desk and pulled out the paperwork, already prepared and signed. Holding it out, he made no motion to get up from his desk and waited for Clyde to come collect it.

“You…you wouldn’t fire him on Christmas?” Clyde asked, a final, weak petition. Being Craig Tucker’s personal assistant isn’t a job the narrator would wish on an enemy, let alone someone with as big a heart as Clyde Donovan. It should be noted here that Clyde’s Christmas spirit was merry and bright, and kept all the year, but still not enough to counter Craig’s grinchiness.

“Tomorrow is Christmas,” Craig said. “It’s only Christmas Eve. Give this to him before he goes home. He’s always leaving early.”

“He. He leaves at five, sir.” Calling Stan ‘Mr. Marsh’ was weird, but Craig had long since ceased to be ‘dude’ or ‘bro.’

“Hours before he has any business going anywhere. Although now he’ll have plenty of time on his hands.” Craig leaned back into his chair with a sigh. “Next message.”

Clyde’s hands stuttered around his notepad and the awful paperwork he didn’t even want to think about leaving on Butters’ desk. “Just one more. Your sister.” Craig groaned. “She wants you to know they’re setting a place for you whether you come tomorrow or not.”

“Not,” Craig said emphatically. Once upon a time, he’d put his sister through school, and fought bullies who picked on her for being poor, and didn’t bat an eye when she brought home her partner to meet him. These, too, were memories coated in dust in the crevices of Craig’s mind.

“She said she wanted the family to be together,” Clyde said quietly.

“Well, we’re all that’s left, aren’t we? Not much of a family celebration.” Craig exhaled sharply and pulled out new paperwork to review. “Fine. Go back to your desk. I want everything in order for the after-Christmas programming. People don’t want to think the day after Christmas, they want to eat leftovers and watch T.V. And we’re going to capitalize on it.”

“Right,” Clyde said. Agreeing with one’s boss and agreeing in spirit are very different things, dear reader.

Just as Clyde turned to go back to his desk outside Craig’s office, Craig called him back. “One more thing.” He pulled one last document from his desk. Or, rather, an envelope, sealed.

It contained Clyde’s usual end-of-year bonus, something Craig continued to do for his assistant, his once-best-friend, even after convincing the head of the network to cut holiday bonuses in the interest of saving money for “what really mattered”: their programming and advertisers. This tiny act, one admittedly born from obligation and not without its bitterness, may appear to the reader as it does to the narrator a sign, a slight glimmer, that not all hope was lost.

“Here.” Craig thrust the envelope at Clyde without ceremony and shooed him from the office with even less warmth.

The next few hours, the narrator has opted not to summarize, as they are egregiously boring and do not further the story at all. Craig sat at his desk on Christmas Eve and worked, the end.

Not the actual end, mind.

At seven o’clock, Clyde came back in to tell Craig he was leaving.

“Did you speak with Stotch?”

“I gave him what you gave me,” Clyde said.

“Good.”

“I’m off tomorrow, sir,” Clyde reminded him. “For Christmas.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I’ll see you all the earlier the morning after.”

Clyde’s shoulders hunched. “Yes, sir.”

It wasn’t until nearly eight o’clock that Craig himself left the office. There were folks still working, of course, but they had come in for the night shift. They weren’t pulling fourteen-hour days.

Again, the humble narrator will save the good reader the exhaustion of hearing every detail of Craig’s journey home. Simply put, he bought himself a sandwich from the deli on the first floor of his office building and got into his private company car, which his private company driver used to transport him to his fancy downtown apartment. Craig got out without acknowledging his driver, and ate his sandwich in the elevator up to his place.

This is where it gets good, the narrator promises.

Because no sooner did Craig Tucker walk through his apartment door, he realized that someone else was in his apartment. Dear old dad, who was dead as a door nail.

“What the he—” Craig managed, slamming the door shut behind him. Thomas Tucker looked just the same as he did the last time Craig had seen him years ago. Still balding, still fat, still wearing an expression of empty confusion.

“Hello, son,” Thomas said.

“Who the—” The narrator regrets to say that Craig’s word of choice isn’t suitable for a nice Christmas story. “—are you?” Craig threw aside the foil from his sandwich and grabbed an umbrella from the stand by his door, brandishing it as a weapon. Thomas looked at it with eyes crinkled with sadness; Craig saw his chance and took it, thrusting his weapon forward. The umbrella went right through Thomas as if he were a hologram.

“In life, I was your father,” he answered.

“Jesus,” Craig said, which was wildly inappropriate considering the Eve on which it was said. “You don’t stick around when I’m a kid, but now you take time out of your busy schedule in Hell to bother me?”

“I haven’t come to bother you, Craig.” Thomas’s voice cracked. “I’ve come to help you.”

“I don’t need your help. Go haunt somebody else. Show up in a bathroom mirror and scare a bunch of kids, or whatever.”

“You _do_ need my help,” Thomas insisted. “Craig, I know I wasn’t the best father to you—”

“Understatement of the century.”

“—but, believe me, I never dreamed you’d turn out like this.”

Craig bristled. “Like _what_ , exactly? Successful? Independent?”

“Lonely,” Thomas said. “Cold. I was foolish in my life, son, I wasted the time I had. And if you don’t get off this path of spite you’re on, you’ll follow in my footsteps.”

The idea of being even the slightest bit like his old man stayed Craig’s tongue.

“There were mistakes I made,” Thomas continued. “So many mistakes. Some I knew I was making or realized later, but most…most of my errors, I had no idea. I walked through life with my eyes closed. Closed to kindness. Closed to family. Closed to what really mattered.”

“Nice epiphany.” Craig wouldn’t want the reader to know this, but he worked very hard to sound cold and not curious. “Get on with it, then. What do you want with me?”

“Much. It’s years too late to make up for your childhood, but…but consider this a true act of fatherly love for you, Craig. I had to pull a lot of strings to get this opportunity, this chance for you to be saved. Tonight, you’ll be visited by three ghosts.”

“No, I think I’m good,” Craig said.

“The first will come at one o’clock, the second at two, and the third at three.”

“They weren’t willing to coordinate and get it all over with in one go, huh?”

Thomas stepped closer, and Craig instinctively stepped back. Ghosts aren’t exactly the most beloved house guests.

“Son, don’t waste this chance. I want better for you. I want you to have everything I gave up. I want you to be happy.” Thomas put his hands on Craig’s shoulders. Despite their transparency, Craig felt their weight. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

And with that, Thomas gave him a good shove.

He should have staggered into the door, or perhaps landed on the sleek hardwood floors of his apartment, but when Craig’s butt hit the snow, he knew his father had screwed him over one more time from beyond the grave.

“Son of a…” Craig jumped to his feet, glad that he hadn’t taken off his coat, and spun around. He was back out in the city, in a young, trendy district he vaguely knew. On one side of the street was a Korean Barbecue restaurant next to an Italian bakery; in front of him was a family-run grocer advertising homemade hot apple cider in their window.

It took Craig a few moments, but he finally found a street sign and whipped out his cell phone to call his driver. Who, for his part, was totally baffled as to how Craig managed to get across town moments after he’d been dropped off at his apartment.

“Does it matter how I got here?” Craig growled into his phone. “Pick. Me. Up.” He hung up and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Behind him, the grocer door jingled with one of those tacky bells, a woman’s “Thank you, come again!” following her customer out into the cold. Boots crunched in the snow behind him, then came to a halt.

“Craig?”

Craig would never admit it if he were narrating his own story, but his heart stopped at that very moment. He knew that voice. Every fiber of his being remembered that voice. When he whirled around, the speaker stood just outside the grocer’s door, two bottles of cider in his arms.

“Tweek,” Craig managed. How long had it been? Years. Years since Craig had seen him, but he hadn’t changed a bit. Tweek shuffled towards him in the snow.

“What are you doing here?” It wasn’t a mean question, but genuinely curious. Shocked, perhaps, just as much as Craig was. Major cities meant few run-ins with old flames. That is, unless Fate steps in. The narrator hates to spoil a good story but will just say that Fate may or may not have been involved.

“I…I don’t know,” Craig admitted. “I just sort of…ended up here.” Tweek cocked his head to one side, expression thoughtful. Craig hurried on. “What about you?” He glanced at the bottles. “Going to a party? Um…a date?”

Tweek blinked, then smiled slowly. “No, I’m not—no. I live near here. Just on my way to a friend’s for dinner.” Tweek shrugged, the cider bottles in his arms clinking. “Are you spending the holiday with Ruby?”

“Yeah,” Craig lied. He knew Tweek would like that answer, and he did. His smile lit up his whole face. “You look. You look great.” He did. His hair was longer now, spiraling out from under his knit winter hat and curling over his shoulders. Very little had changed, his fair skin still looking impossibly soft, freckles splashed over the bridge of his nose, green eyes wide and wondering. Craig swallowed.

“Thanks. So do you.” Tweek shrugged again, his cider an awkward weight to carry, and Craig lurched forward with arms outstretched. “No, I’m okay, I’ve got them.” He laughed. “Well, I should go. Tell Ruby I said hi.”

“Okay. Wait, no, don’t go!” Even Craig knew enough about Fate to know their paths wouldn’t cross again after this night if he didn’t do something. Tweek paused and looked up at him. “Would you—do you…are you hungry?” He gestured at the barbecue joint across the street. Tweek bit his lip to hide a smile, that slow, crooked smile Craig had seen on his face thousands of times.

“My friends are expecting me,” he said, not unkindly.

Craig let his arm drop, embarrassed. “Oh. Right. Um, but, wait, are you—” Tweek stopped to wait for him again. “Do you want a ride?” Craig asked. “My driver is on his way.”

“Your driver,” Tweek repeated, his crooked smile softening. “Gosh. No, Craig, but thank you. I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

“It’s not,” Craig said.

“You don’t know where I’m going.”

“It’s not out of the way,” Craig said. Tweek evaluated him again.

“It’s not that far. I can walk.” The words weren’t what Craig wanted to hear, but the tone in which they were said was sweet. “But thank you. Really.”

“Are you sure? I can—” The rest of Craig’s sentence was lost to the roar of an engine pulling up behind him. He spun around to see one of the company cars tearing down the street. Instinctively, he jerked between the car and Tweek, even though it slammed to a stop a few feet away.

“That wouldn’t happen to be your car, would it?” Tweek teased, and Craig’s knees went weak at his chuckle. That sound hadn’t graced Craig’s ears in so long, he decided to let this driver live.

It wasn’t his usual driver. To Craig’s horror, the fat bastard waddling out of the driver’s seat was his least favorite employee, Eric Cartman. Craig had tried more than once to get him fired, but he had some sort of in with the people in charge. They thought he was funny.

“’Ay, hotshot!” Cartman shouted from a few feet away, brushing the cheese dust from his Cheesy Poofs off the front of his uniform. “What the—” Again, reader, your narrator makes the story nicer for you. “—are you doing, calling me out here in this—” Reader, truly, you narrator does a lot of work. “—cold to pick up your sorry butt?”

Craig had never wanted to fire him more. Behind him, Tweek was failing to stifle his giggles, his mittens too busy keeping his cider from falling.

“I think I’d better go,” Tweek said then, and Craig turned to look at him. “But you get home safe.” He widened his eyes and tilted his head in Cartman’s direction, and every part of Craig ached with longing. “It was good to see you.”

“You, too.” And Craig’s heart sank because he knew there was no way to salvage this meeting now. Watching Tweek, bundled up in his winter coat, walking off into the snow just starting to fall was the worst thing that had happened to Craig tonight. Including the incompetence of his employees. Including a visit from his ghostly father.

“Come on, loverboy, I’m freezing my ass off out here. Get in the car so I can go home!”

Including Eric Cartman.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a bumpy, jerky ride with a lumpy asshole of a driver, and without Tweek’s little smile and bright eyes in front of him, Craig quickly forgot the spark of joy in his heart. In fact, his crankiness doubled, and he snarked back at every insult Cartman lobbed at him. The narrator will spare the patient reader the depressing and mean-spirited volley of insults that transpired during Craig’s second ride home of the night. Instead, we will move on to Craig’s second ‘second’ of the night: the moment when he opened the door to his apartment and again found an unwelcome guest sitting in his recliner.

“Oh, what the hell?” Craig groaned. Across his living room, Stan Marsh was flipping through a book.

“You know, dude, you were kind of cute when you were a kid. You really should smile more.” He held up the book for Craig to see: an old yearbook.

“How did you get in here?” Craig thundered, going for his umbrella again, on the floor where it had dropped after Daddy Dearest pushed him. Come to think of it, why had his father pushed him? So he could see Tweek all happy and over him, and let him slip through his fingers again? Craig’s mood was worsening by the minute, and Stan’s unexplained presence in his apartment didn’t help matters. Stan looked up blankly.

“Oh, no, dude, you don’t get it. Check it.” Stan put the yearbook down on the coffee table and pointed to the clock on Craig’s mantle. Almost against his will, Craig’s eyes followed the gesture to where the clock had inexplicably raced ahead in time to one o’clock. “I’m the ghost.”

Craig dropped his umbrella. “ _You’re_ a ghost? This sure in an elaborate trick.”

“It’s not a trick.” Stan put his hands on the armrests and pushed himself up so he could fold his legs up under himself like a pretzel. “I just thought I’d pick an appropriate form to take for our adventure tonight.”

“Like I’d go on an adventure with a tool like Stan Marsh. We’ll probably end up in outer space or something.”

“Ah, and I didn’t introduce myself properly.” This guest allegedly wasn’t Stan, but he was jittery like Stan, already moving again, jumping out of his seat to bound over to Craig at the door. “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long past?” Craig couldn’t help asking.

“Nah. Your past.” Not-Stan spread his arms and grinned. “I’m here for your welfare, dude!” At Craig’s scathing look, his smile dimmed. “Your reclamation? Whatever, man, let’s rock and roll. Come on, time’s a-wasting!”

Resigning himself to this stupid fate his father burdened him with, Craig shrugged off his jacket and dropped his umbrella. “Lead the way.”

Stan’s spread arms suddenly shot together right before Craig’s eyes, and Craig couldn’t help yelping in alarm, nearly staggering back at the unexpected clap. He was just about to cuss Stan out for being an idiot and/or asshole, whatever insult felt right in the moment, when he realized they were no longer standing in his apartment.

“You know this place?” Stan asked like he already knew the answer.

“My house. The house I grew up in.” Craig knew the paisley cushions on the couch, the mangled carpet his cat had discolored with puke a hundred times, and the ancient lace curtains that stayed up because they belonged to his grandmother. “I thought they tore it all down.”

“Not that great a neighborhood,” Stan remarked, waltzing into the Tuckers’ living room. Craig stormed in after him. “Though I hear now it’s a mini-mall and a Shakey’s Pizza.”

“What do you mean, ‘now’?”

“I told you, dude, I’m the Ghost of Christmas _Past_.” Stan finally stopped wandering, settling on the corner to examine the Tuckers’ sad little Christmas tree, leaning up against the wall with a handful of poorly-wrapped packages beneath it. “These are just shadows of your life. Think of it like we’re watching home movies. The Christmas highlight reel.”

Before Craig could quip back, Stan turned towards the doorway and smiled. A little girl burst in from the kitchen, her red hair up in pigtails.

“Ruby,” Craig said. His little sister only looked to be seven or eight years old. She took one look at the tree and lit up, turned on her heel, and shot back into the kitchen.

“Craig!” she called, her voice echoing down the hallway. “Santa came!”

“They can’t see or hear us,” Stan added. “So you can just watch.”

Craig paused. If Ruby were seven or eight, then… “What year is this?”

“You know what year it is,” Stan said blankly. The Tucker siblings raced back through the door, Ruby dragging Craig behind her. “Aww, look at how little and cute you were!”

He did know what year it was. This little Craig before him knew the Santa myth but played along for his sister’s sake. This was her last year of believing, not that either of the siblings knew it then. Craig watched solemnly.

“Kids?”

That voice in his ears startled Craig, and he turned to see his mother coming in from the kitchen with a mug of steaming coffee in her hands. Her eyes were tired, red, details he hadn’t noticed then. One thing was just as he remembered: her bright smile as she watched them.

“Mom,” he managed.

“She was a nice lady,” Stan said. Craig would have scoffed at the simplistic observation, but seeing Laura Tucker shuffling into the living room and easing herself down onto the couch was too much for him. “You were pretty young when she died.”

“Yeah.” She looked so young before his eyes now. In ten years, she’d be gone. “She worked so many jobs to make ends meet. She worked so hard to take care of us.” Craig sat beside her on the couch, unable to take his eyes off of her tired face. He reached out to touch her, and his hand passed right through her blonde hair.

“Moms are like that,” Stan said. “They work their whole lives to take care of their babies, and then their babies take care of them.”

“I didn’t get the chance to take care of her,” Craig said softly. “I didn’t have anything when she…” He couldn’t say it. Even now.

“Other people have the chance to take care of their mothers.” Stan’s wide eyes burned into Craig’s, and it was at this moment that Craig accepted that this wasn’t Stan. Stan Marsh couldn’t muster that pointed meanness.

“It’s HR’s job to adjust salary deposits.”

“It’s his boss’s job to care that his family is struggling. You know, you’re not the only kid ever whose mom worked herself ragged to take care of her family.”

Any rebuttal Craig might have voiced was cut off by a shriek of excitement. Ruby bolted past him and scooted up onto the couch next to her mother. “Mom, look what Santa brought me!” She held up a doll of some sort, one Craig vaguely remembered, though he’s never been very interested in his sister’s dolls. His mother laughed and scooped Ruby up to sit on her lap with one arm, the other hand still balancing her coffee mug.

“Santa must have had his elves work very hard on that,” his mother said, winking at little Craig sitting on the floor by the tree. Now _that_ Craig remembered: dropping Ruby off at a birthday party and then going shopping with his mother, scouring the discount stores for presents nice enough to be from Santa.

Little Craig was in on the secret, too. He beamed up at his mother for a split second before glancing back at the presents. “Should we wait for Dad?”

A shadow crossed his mother’s face, but in a blink she was smiling again. “He wasn’t feeling well, but he said we should start without him. Why don’t you find something nice to open?”

While the Tucker siblings tore open their gifts and brought presents to their mother on the couch, Craig avoided Stan’s eye.

“This was the year your parents split,” Stan said knowingly. Craig scowled at the wall.

“He was already gone. We went to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner without him, and everyone knew but us. It was awful.”

“It was awful because you’re only remembering that he left,” Stan said. “And I get that. It _would_ be the thing you’d remember most. But, you know, it wasn’t such a bad Christmas aside from that. I think you brought your mother a lot of joy on what would have otherwise been a pretty terrible day.” They watched as Laura Tucker made up two mugs of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows and brought them back to the couch, where her two kids each took a mug and blew on them, both snuggling into their mother’s fuzzy bathrobe on either side of her. She seemed less tired now, the faintest smile on her face as she surveyed the wrapping paper strewn everywhere.

“It must have been killing her,” Craig mumbled.

“Maybe,” Stan said. “But I think it took a lot of courage for her to make it a good Christmas for you. Even if it was the toughest thing she had to do on the inside, on the outside she was nothing but strong.”

For the first time in his life, the narrator will reveal, Craig wholeheartedly agreed with Stan. Figures it would take Stan not actually being himself to make that happen.

“Let’s see another Christmas,” Stan said. “Another one where you were there for your mother.”

“Cranberry sauce!” Laura called, and Craig spun around. They were outside of a new house, the two-family where Laura and her kids had rented a condo for a few years. A shaggy-haired teenage Craig was coming out the door and shrugging on his coat.

“Okay, Mom, I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“First Christmas home from college,” Stan said brightly.

“Community college,” Craig said. “I lived at home.”

“Still your first Christmas as a college man.” Stan rolled his eyes and tilted his head in the direction of the younger Craig.

They followed him down the street to the little square where the local grocery and convenience store were. The storefronts were all decorated with cheap lights, but Younger Craig smiled and lingered in front of windows. He stopped in front of a particularly garish one and took a picture with his phone. Then he started texting. Sending it, Craig remembered, to Clyde. Clyde, whose family rented the other condo in their house. The three Donovans were coming over for Christmas dinner the next day. At one time, Craig and Clyde had joked about how they’d be brothers if their single mother and father ever got married. Mr. Donovan would have been a good dad.

“You used to like Christmas,” Stan said, interrupting his train of thought.

Craig shook himself. “Yes, and thank you for taking time out of my life to show me my younger self wasting time looking in windows.”

“That’s not why we’re here, dude.” Stan jogged to catch up with the younger Craig as he went into the grocery. “You seriously don’t remember?” The door shut behind the younger Craig before Stan got to it, but he ran right through the door, disappearing inside the store. Craig tried to grab the handle and found his hand pass through it, so he followed Stan’s lead and ghosted his way through the door.

It was a little store, one Craig remembered even from the few years the Tuckers lived in that condo. The whole neighborhood was smaller and cheaper than where they’d been before, but not nearly as rough an area. Mostly just students renting temporary space. It only took a moment or two to go past a few aisles to where Stan was watching Younger Craig scan the shelves for cranberry sauce.

“ _Now_ do you remember?”

“That I need to make an appointment to get my hair cut? Yes.” Craig scowled after his younger self as he walked up to the painfully empty section of the shelves where traditional holiday food once stood. The boxed stuffing was picked over, canned green beans and carrots turned on their sides and dented. Younger Craig groaned, but the sound abruptly cut off into a triumphant “Ha!” And he lunged for the last can of cranberry sauce.

At exactly the same moment he reached it, another hand wrapped around the can. The younger Craig looked down at his hand over another hand on the can, then up to its owner.

“Oh! Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” the other young man managed. Tweek. His hair was so much shorter back then, sticking out in every direction in the permanent bedhead look he seemed to wear, and he had a huge knit scarf wound around his neck about a dozen times.

“It’s okay,” Younger Craig stammered. Stan grinned over his shoulder at Craig and waggled his eyebrows. Craig crossed his arms and glared back. “You got there first.”

“No, really, it’s fine.” Tweek let go of the can, and Younger Craig took a few extra seconds before pulling his hand away from the other guy’s trembling fingers. “I don’t, ngh, needawholecan just for me, geh!”

“Just for you?” Younger Craig pried, the cranberry sauce forgotten on the shelf. He smiled, and the expression seemed totally foreign to his older self watching. “On Christmas?”

“Christmas Eve,” Stan tutted. “Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Be quiet.” Craig stepped closer. He was no less entranced now than he had been ten years ago when Tweek’s bright eyes first stared up at him.

“Well, ngh, yeah…I’mastudent!” Tweek tugged on his hair, and Younger Craig reached out on instinct to gently push his hand back down.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said. He hadn’t known then what a wreck Tweek was when he first moved to the city for school. But he’d known to be gentle. Craig couldn’t put it into words, even looking back as an adult, but the narrator can: the very instant they met, Craig wanted to be anything Tweek needed, because the very instant they met, he needed Tweek. “Would. Would you like to come to Christmas dinner? My family lives nearby.”

“Wh—Idon’tknowyou!” Tweek shrieked, his hands back in his hair. Other patrons in the store glanced over, but Younger Craig didn’t turn his attention away. He put his hands down and took half a step back.

“That’s true, you don’t…I’m sorry, I just…wouldn’t want you to be alone on Christmas.”

“I’m always alone on Christmas,” Tweek said.

“Even when you were a kid? Even when you lived at home?”

Tweek’s eyes glittered with a flash of annoyance. “You don’t know my parents. Eventhen, ngh.” He grabbed the can of cranberry sauce and shoved it into Younger Craig’s hands, startling him. “Merry Christmas,” he said, flustered but sincere. He hustled past Craig and Stan towards the exit.

“Hey, wait,” Younger Craig said, spinning around. Tweek hesitated. “Okay, well…you spend Christmas alone, but what about the day _after_ Christmas?” Tweek turned slowly to look over his shoulder. “Because if you don’t have plans to be by yourself, umm…maybe you’d like to…go ice skating over in the park across the street? And get hot chocolate?”

Tweek’s expression turned from slight distress to incredulousness. “Are you askingmeout?”

Younger Craig smiled and shuffled his feet a little. “Umm…yeah?”

“Oh!” Tweek’s whole face flushed, a downfall of his fair complexion. Though Younger Craig’s olive skin wasn’t enough to hide his blush at this moment either.

Then Stan was tugging on the sleeve of Craig’s suit jacket. “Come on, dude, one more Christmas to look at.”

“I want to stay,” Craig said, trying to keep his feet planted. Stan must have had ghost powers he wasn't admitting to, though, because he dragged Craig out as if he weighed nothing. “Why can’t you bring me back to our first date?”

“Because now that you’ve remembered how you met, that memory’s come back all shiny and precious,” Stan said. “You remember everything about how the sun caught his hair just right, and how you invited him to an ice skating date without actually knowing how to ice skate, like an idiot, and how he tried to teach you, gave up, and tasted like coffee when you kissed him goodbye.”

Temper flaring, Craig jerked his arm away from Stan as they went out onto the street in front of the grocery. “How do you know all that?”

Stan pointed at himself. “Ghost.”

Craig was actually quite shy about all that information, dear reader. He’d never told anyone those little details, and there were other things he didn’t want anyone, especially Stan Marsh, to know.

“He spent the next Christmas at your house. You were both interning, he didn’t want to go home…” With an impish smile, Stan added, “He spent the night, too.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Craig snapped. The way the teasing look on Stan’s face melted into a knowing smile was even more embarrassing.

“I know it wasn’t. You were really happy that he got to meet your mom. She was so sick then.”

“Stay out of my head,” Craig said. His voice came out even lower than he meant it to. Stan shrugged.

“You spent a lot of happy Christmases with Tweek, but showing you the good times won’t wake you up. Let’s try this one.” He pointed, and when Craig turned his attention in that direction, he saw the door to another apartment, nicer and more expensive than anything his mother had owned. “How about your five-year anniversary?”

Craig’s stomach turned to ice as he watched himself—older and more clean-cut than the boy looking for cranberry sauce, but five years younger than he was now—approach the door. This Craig’s expression was hardened, the wolfish look of an inexplicably young assistant director gunning for his boss’s job. In his hand was a professional-looking portfolio containing his pitch for _Close-up Puppies with a Wide Angle Lens_ , the first of the _Close-up_ series he now directed that dominated the ratings charts. He’d just pitched it to his boss’s boss, and the next morning, he’d be getting an impressed call.

That wasn’t, dear reader, the memory returning to Craig’s mind in this moment.

“I don’t want to see this,” he said coldly.

“Tough,” Stan replied, his eyes going wide and dead again.

Younger Craig fiddled with his keys for a few moments, found the one he wanted, and unlocked the door. Stan grabbed Craig’s arm and dragged him into the apartment with his younger self.

It had once been a vibrant little apartment, nicer than any of their friends’ places and with walls covered in Craig’s photographs and counter space covered in Tweek’s knickknacks. It didn’t look like that now, all traces of Tweek missing. His knickknacks, his mug tree, his Keurig and fancy K-cup carousel, the afghans he knit, his mismatched socks gone from the floor. Younger Craig paused in the doorway, the door shutting loudly behind him, seeming to echo in the half-empty apartment.

Tweek emerged from the bedroom, a roller suitcase behind him. “You’re home.” He looked different here, too, still beautiful, but in a sad way. His hair was a little longer, almost able to weigh itself down, and he was wearing clothes that fit. It looked so strange to Craig even now to see Tweek wearing anything that wasn’t one of Craig’s sweaters, stolen from their closet and undeniably cuter on Tweek’s slighter frame.

Younger Craig’s lips came together, on the cusp of shaping the word _what_ , but no question would come. Tweek held his gaze solemnly.

“I thought I’d be gone by the time you got back,” he said. “You’re early.”

Stan exaggerated looking at the digital clock on the microwave, which read 9:45 p.m.

“Gone?” Younger Craig repeated. None of the awe that had been in his voice when he’d first met Tweek was there, and Craig had a sudden desire to punch himself in the face.

“The rest of my stuff is packed up, and I contacted the landlord, so.” Tweek reached into his pocket and took out his apartment key. He placed it on the kitchen counter, where it made a soft _clink_ against the granite.

“Where are you going?” Younger Craig asked, emotion finally starting to trickle into his voice.

“Token’s going to let me crash with him for a little,” Tweek said. “Just ‘til I find my own place. You won’t see me again.”

“But—” Reality was sinking in on Younger Craig’s face. Craig remembered the feeling of that realization well. “We were going to get married.”

“No,” Tweek said. Younger Craig put his portfolio and briefcase down on the counter, his eyes never leaving Tweek’s face. “That’s an old promise. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Why would you show me this?” Craig asked, turning to glare at Stan. “You think I forgot this? Look at it!” He threw his arm out behind himself. “This was the worst day of my life. Is it any wonder I hate Christmas now?”

Stan didn’t say a word, stranger and less like the real Stan than ever. From behind Craig, he could hear the conversation continue.

“You’re different now, Craig. A different person than when we met. You want different things—”

“I don’t want different things!” Younger Craig argued. “I want the same things—a better life than the one I had growing up, security, a good home. Wanting those things doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“It doesn’t,” Tweek agreed, “but your pursuit of those things has changed you. You work from dawn to dusk, Craig, and well into the night. You blow off our friends, I barely see you. And I don’t think it bothers you.”

“It did,” Craig said. “It does. I love you.” Stan shushed him.

“This is what happens when you’re working your way up,” Younger Craig argued. “You have to put in your time. I’ll work now, and then I’ll have more free time later.”

Tweek shook his head. “Craig, I…I decided a long time ago. That I would release you.” He rolled his suitcase closer and pushed himself up on his toes to kiss Younger Craig’s cheek. “You were the first person I ever loved. I’ll never forget you.” He eased back down to his feet. “I hope your life is happy.”

“Stop him!” Craig said, spinning back to his younger self. Standing there stupidly, silently. Tweek took his suitcase and left. “No, don’t do this again, you idiot! Go after him, stop him!”

“He can’t hear you, dude,” Stan said. Craig stormed up to his younger self and tried to grab his jacket, shake him. His hands passed right through.

“Come _on_ , he hasn’t even made it to the elevator,” Craig pleaded. “Go after him, you fool!”

“Still can’t hear you.” Stan grabbed Craig’s arm and tugged him toward the door. “Come on, dude. I know we’re supposed to stick to your memories, but I’m going to let you in on part of that night you missed.”

The elevator was just arriving for Tweek when they got to the end of the hallway. Craig ran in after him. “Tweek! Tweek, don’t, please, go back. Take him back.”

“He can’t hear you, either. I’m starting to think _you_ can’t hear, dude.”

The doors shut behind Stan, and the elevator started moving down to the garage. Tweek let go of the handle to his suitcase and, to Craig’s horror, covered his face with his hands and started shaking in a way he hadn't for years. For most of their relationship.

“That was the hardest thing he ever had to do, you know,” Stan said, leaning against the wall of the elevator. “Walk away when he still loved you.”

“He still loved me,” Craig repeated quietly, reaching up in an attempt to cup Tweek’s face in his hands. His ghostly hands passed right through him.

“You did this,” Stan said. “It must have been killing him to make it all the way down to his car and leave, but he stayed strong.”

The elevator doors opened. Tweek swiped at his eyes, sniffled loudly, and dragged his suitcase out into the garage. Craig had gone very still.

“Is that why you started with the Christmas my father left?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Like father, like son,” Stan said, but it wasn’t Stan’s voice anymore. Maybe it never was. It was too cold now, too hard. The real Stan would have helped Craig chase Tweek, even a shadow of Tweek, to apologize and confess his feelings and make up. “Come on.”

They got off the elevator, and Craig watched Tweek’s beat-up little bug sputter out of the garage. Stan pushed up one of his sleeves and checked his watch.

“Well, that’s it for me, dude,” he said, back in Stan’s goofy voice. “It’s two o’clock. Your next appointment should be coming any minute.”

“Another ghost?” Craig asked. “What the hell are there three of you for?”

“Well, we’ve all got our specialties,” Stan said, distracted. He glanced around the parking lot. “I’m just your past.”

“So that means—” At the other end of the parking garage, an engine roared. Tires squealed against the pavement. Craig turned on instinct, wracking his brain for anyone in their building who’d been such a reckless driver. The sight that met him was entirely unpleasant. “Are you kidding me?” he snarled, but Stan was gone, vanished into thin air.

The company car pulled up in front of him, screeching to a stop, and the driver’s side window rolled down.

“’Ay, buttwipe,” Cartman said. “Ready for your Christmas Present?”


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Craig said.

“I don’t kid, di—” Whoops! The narrator got a little lax there after the Ghost of Christmas Past behaved himself so well. This chapter will require a little more vigilance. “Now, get in, so we can get this over with.”

“At least I’m on the same page with this ghost,” Craig said, getting into the back of the car. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t actually Cartman he was agreeing with, but a shiver of revulsion still climbed his spine.

He didn’t have a chance to click in his seatbelt, the car roaring across the parking lot and through the wall, as ghostly as Stan and Craig had been going through the door to the grocery. On the other side of the garage wasn’t the garden or even the neighboring apartment building. They pulled out in front of a brick townhouse with an elegant front gate, a lit wreath hanging on the front door. Craig followed Cartman out of the car.

“Where are we?” Craig asked. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Of course you haven’t—” Reader, your narrator suspects that there will be a lot of interruptions in this chapter to keep the story nice for Christmas. In lieu of such interruptions, the narrator proposes replacing words that are on the naughty list with ones from the nice list. All un-Chritsmas-like language will now be replaced with “mistletoe,” which is a much more festive word and involves smooching, which can only possibly be a good thing.

Anyway.

“Christmas Past is past,” Cartman continued. “That was Stan, and he’s done now. I’m the Ghost of Christmas _Present_ , as in, right now. This is what’s happening while you’re getting your mistletoe kicked by mistletoe-ing Christmas spirit.” Ah, yes, this is much better. The narrator is pleased.

“Okay, well, I’ve still never been here.” Craig crossed his arms even though he wasn’t cold. Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t been cold the whole time he’d traveled with Stan, either.

“Again, of course you haven’t, mistletoe. This is the new residence of an old friend of yours. Now move.” They ghosted their way through the door and into a lavishly decorated front hall. Craig knew from the polish of the hardwood floors and the sparkling glass of the chandelier who owned this place, even before Token rounded the corner with a plate of fancy hors d’oeuvres.

“Do you n-nuh-need any help, Token?” When Craig looked over his shoulder, he saw Jimmy Valmer, another old friend, sitting at the living room table. His crutches were propped up against the wall behind him.

“Nah, I’m good.” 

“You seem uncomfortable,” Cartman said. “I understand. This isn’t the sort of company I would keep on Christmas, either.”

“I’m not a racist mistletoe like you,” Craig shot back. “I just. Don’t know these guys that well. They were really Tweek’s friends, not mine. I guess we all hung out back then.”

“Speaking of,” Cartman said. The doorbell rang, and Token looked up so quickly Craig forgot for a second that he couldn’t see them. He walked right through Craig to get to the door.

“Hey, there you are!” Token said, and when Craig turned around, there was Tweek in the doorway. He wore the same hat and coat Craig had seen him in earlier, and in his arms were the same two bottles of cider. So it was Christmas Eve night. This was where Tweek was going. “Get in here, man, it’s freezing out there!”

“Kept the cider cold, at least,” Tweek chirped back, hopping into the house like a little bird. He handed off his cider to Token and pulled off his hat and gloves. His strawberry-gold hair spilled out over his shoulders, even longer than Craig had realized, and curled around his face. Craig watched, transfixed, as Tweek shrugged off his coat and hung everything up in the front hall closet. “Hi, Jimmy,” he called into the living room.

“Hey, T-Tuh-week!”

Craig followed Tweek into the living room, Cartman trailing behind him, and watched as the three friends sat down to snacks and drinks. On a humongous flat-screen hanging on the wall, Token had a video of a crackling fire looping, instrumental Christmas songs twinkling in the background. If they’d stayed together, maybe he’d be sitting here right now, finger-combing Tweek’s soft hair away from his face and tasting what looked like ritzy chef-prepared treats. Absently, he lowered himself to the couch where Tweek was sitting beside Jimmy.

The conversation, typical pleasantries and holiday office party stories, reached Craig’s ears in that half-listening way, the voices comforting, the stories themselves not sticking. Mostly he watched Tweek’s eyes light up when he laughed, or watched his hands soar through the air with gestures as he told his own stories. Those ones he was listening to.

The hors d’oeuvres were just about gone, and a full bottle of cider emptied, when the conversation finally dulled into a comfortable silence. Craig glanced over his shoulder to give Cartman a questioning look. This wasn’t the kind of antagonistic scene Stan had bombarded him with. Cartman crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway, returning Craig’s look with a superior sniff.

“All right, Tweek, we’ve waited long enough,” Token said, pushing aside the wine glass he’d used for cider. “How’d your date go?”

Craig spun around in his seat in time to see Tweek wince. “Oh, it was fine. He’s nice.”

“He’s nice,” Token repeated flatly. Craig couldn’t see what he was so bummed about. Tweek’s being dismissive of some guy he went on a date with was great news to Craig.

“There just wasn’t a spark,” Tweek said, focusing on his still partially-full glass. He sipped from it.

“There’s n-nuh-never a spark,” Jimmy said, leaning back against the couch cushions.

“Oh, well—”

“He’s right, man,” Token said. “We’ve set you up on how many dates? And we can’t take you anywhere without you getting free drinks from somebody down the bar.”

“I liked the g-guh-guy who sent us f-fuh-free wings for the table,” Jimmy added.

“But there’s never any _spark_.” The exasperation in Token’s voice was palpable.

“I just haven’t met the right guy yet,” Tweek said, pouring himself more cider and avoiding eye contact.

“Yes, you have,” Craig said, forgetting he was a ghost and reaching out for Tweek’s hand. His fingers passed right through. “I’m the right guy for you.”

“Shh, Craig, I’m trying to hear,” Cartman all but shouted, far more disruptive than Craig had been.

“And besides, I’ve got lots of other stuff going on. I got that promotion at work, which is a lot of time…and, you know, I’ve been going to more craft fairs to sell my blankets.” Tweek shrugged, leaning back into his seat. “Maybe dating just isn’t the priority right now.”

“Or maybe it’s been five years and you need to move on and find somebody who appreciates you.”

Craig always remembered liking Token, but he wasn’t a big fan of him right now.

Tweek looked down into his glass of cider for a long time. “You know, I…I ran into him. Craig.”

“What?” Both Token and Jimmy jerked forward, expressions both dropping into shock. “Wuh-when?” Jimmy asked. At the same time, Token asked, “Where?”

“Tonight, on my way here. When I was getting the cider. He was outside waiting for his driver to pick him up.”

“His driver,” Token repeated, not sounding impressed.

“And you t-t-tahh…talked to him?” Jimmy pressed, more interested.

Tweek smiled at his cider. “Yeah.”

“And?” Token asked.

“What was he l-like?”

“Umm—kind of the same? Still handsome. Even better-looking than I remembered.” Token groaned and rolled his eyes, but Craig leaned closer, heart pounding. The last time he’d seen Tweek had been the night he moved out, and he’d been so sure they were through. But now—“And kind of goofy.” Tweek laughed. “He…kept making up kind of stupid excuses to keep talking to me.”

“They weren’t stupid,” Craig muttered affectionately.

“Yeah, they were,” Cartman said from across the room.

“Aw, Tweek, don’t,” Token said. “Look, I remember when Craig was a cool guy, too, but that was a long time ago. I’ve seen his shows. Bigwig now. He works even longer days. I’ll bet he’s in his office tomorrow, and dragging his whole team down with him.”

“I’ll have you know that I allowed everyone on my team to take the day off,” Craig said.

“He can’t hear you,” Cartman yawned. “And you made everyone use a vacation day instead of giving them a free one.”

“Who asked you?”

“Token, you don’t have to be so overprotective,” Tweek said. “I mean…I know, we just happened to run into each other. I’ll probably never see him again. But…” Tweek’s eyes crinkled with his smile.

“He’s thinking about how mistletoe-ing stupid you sounded inviting him to dinner literally a minute after he told you he was going to a friend’s for dinner,” Cartman said. Craig glowered at him. “Except instead of thinking it’s mistletoe-ing stupid, he’s thinking it was kind of cute. Like how you were when you first met.” He feigned gagging, but something about Cartman's expression told Craig it was mostly for show.

Token heaved a sigh. “Tweek, look. You don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy, I get that. But I think you’d like to be with someone, and…I mean, you deserve everything you want. You deserve for Craig not to be the way he is.”

“Maybe he’ll ch-chuh-change. It’d be a Christmas miracle!” Jimmy seemed more forgiving than Token, so Craig was less bitter about him. Though, if the narrator might call him out even more, Craig understood perfectly well why Token wasn’t his biggest fan. He’d never admit it, but he was glad that Tweek had such a loyal friend.

“Speaking of Christmas, are you sure you don’t want to come to my place tomorrow?” Token asked. “My parents would be happy to have you.”

“Or mine, if the commute would be easier,” Jimmy added.

“No, that’s okay,” Tweek said with a little laugh. “It’s really not a big deal. I’m fine staying at home. Christmas is a lot of pressure! Best to just make myself a little dinner and have a quiet night in.”

“All right, I think I’ve dangled this carrot in front of you long enough,” Cartman said, coming over to the table. He tried in vain to scoop up the last of the hors d’oeuvres, scoffed, and jerked his head in Craig’s direction. “We’ve got another house to hit.”

Craig wanted to protest, but he’d learned that ghosts do as they please. And he supposed he couldn’t complain; Cartman had been pretty quiet and had showed him that Tweek still had feelings for him. That was a Christmas present for sure.

Cartman rounded the corner into the hall, and when Craig followed, he found himself turning into a very different housing situation: a crappy apartment with a kitchen that didn’t even have a dishwasher, the kind of place students or starving artists rented out because they couldn’t afford anything else. After Token’s lavish home, it was a shock to the system.

“Where are we?” Craig asked. “I can’t possibly know someone who lives here.”

“Oh?” Cartman asked mockingly. Sizzling from the kitchen caught Craig’s attention, and he glanced over to see stir fry burning on the stove.

“Mistletoe!” Clyde bolted out from another room and into the kitchen. He jerked his stir fry pan off the stove and stirred it hopelessly. The peppers and onions were clearly blackened, but he seemed to be able to salvage some of it.

A twinkling little laugh came from behind Craig and Cartman, and Craig turned to see Butters hopping out of another room in fleece pajamas. “Gee, Clyde, it’s a good thing you’re not in charge of the turkey tomorrow!”

“He invited Butters over?” Craig asked, raising an eyebrow. “Or…did Butters invite Clyde?”

“The live together, mistletoe-for-brains. They can’t afford to get their own apartments.”

Craig crossed his arms and pulled his chin in towards his chest. “Oh.”

Butters hopped over to where Clyde was tipping the un-burnt parts of his stir fry over two bowls of white rice. He rested his chin on Clyde’s shoulder to watch, his light eyes soft with admiration. “Oh, it’s not that bad.”

Clyde grinned and turned his head to peck a quick kiss to Butters’ lips. Both of Craig’s eyebrows shot to his hairline and he rounded on Cartman.

“They _can’t afford_ their own places?”

“Hey, that was the truth, okay? I was being seriously! They’re still po’, Craig, but they can be po’ and make out a little if they want. That’s none of my business.”

Clyde took a spoonful from one of the bowls and held it up over his shoulder so Butters could push up onto his toes and blow on it before eating it. “Mmm!” he hummed appreciatively. Clyde laughed.

“Good. Want to grab drinks?”

They carried their dinner over to a couch and coffee table that had seen better days probably when they were children. Craig winced as the furniture creaked under the slight weight of bowls and glasses of water.

“So…did you look at Craig’s thing?” Clyde asked slowly. Craig froze. He’d forgotten. He’d asked Clyde to deliver the paperwork putting Butters out of a job.

“Mistletoe,” he whispered. When Cartman glanced at him, he added quickly, “I didn’t know they were—”

“Nobody does. They keep it pretty quiet. Even I don’t know. That is, the real Cartman doesn’t know.” Cartman cracked his neck. “And he knows a lot.”

“Yeah, okay,” Craig said, relieved for the opportunity to say something mean and distract himself from the realization that he’d told Clyde to fire his partner.

“Not that it matters if you knew or not,” Cartman continued. “You knew Clyde got Butters the job.”

Oh. He’d forgotten that. Cartman gave him a condescending look like he _knew_ Craig had forgotten, and getting that look from Cartman was the worst.

“And that Clyde didn’t want to fire him. And that Butters is actually a pretty hard worker.”

“Now I know you’re not the real Cartman,” Craig said, turning away. “You’re too nice.”

“’Ay!”

“I was too scared to look at it earlier,” Butters admitted, pushing his dinner around with his fork. “Mr. Tucker doesn’t like me.”

“What? Why do you think that?” Clyde asked in a strangled voice. Craig frowned. If Butters already thought he didn’t like him, the paperwork wouldn’t be any surprise. Butters gave Clyde a knowing look, and Clyde grabbed his water to take a long gulp. “Why don’t you go see?”

Butters sighed and got up. He padded off to what Craig assumed was his room and returned shortly with a folded paper in hand. No, not paper. An envelope.

“What the—” Craig managed before Butters plopped down on the couch beside Clyde. He opened up the envelope, and out fell Craig’s hastily-written note— _Happy New Year. – CT_ —and Clyde’s Christmas bonus in cash.

Butters shrieked in surprise at the contents of the envelope. “What—?”

“Didn’t you know?” Clyde said, visibly sweating. “They cut bonuses this year, but Craig still gives ‘em out to a handful of people. The ones he really likes.” Butters looked up, his shock melting into a glowing smile. “Guess he really likes you.”

Butters squealed and threw his arms around Clyde’s neck. “Ooh! This is perfect! Now we don’t have to worry as much about our rent…”

“See? Told you they were po’.”

Craig shushed Cartman, inching closer to listen.

“Nah, you keep that,” Clyde said. “You earned it.”

“Yeah, but…” Butters leaned back, glee dimming. “I mean…we can really use this money.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Clyde said. “I…I got a bonus, too, you know. You keep that for you.”

Craig was only partly aware of Cartman dragging him away from the scene. “I told him to fire Butters. He was supposed to give him the termination papers.”

“Well, _clearly_ , he didn’t, Craig. Clyde’s not an unfeeling mistletoe like you. He wouldn’t fire somebody on Christmas.” Cartman snorted. “Sorry, my bad, Christmas _Eve_. Speaking of which, I’m over it. Let’s do Christmas Day and be done with this.”

“Yeah, but—that was Clyde’s bonus,” Craig said. “He didn’t get another one like he said. What about their rent?”

Cartman actually stopped so quickly that Craig crashed into him. He turned very slowly. “Yes, Craig. What _about_ their rent?”

Pursing his lips, Craig found that he had no answer, and he followed Cartman out the door of Clyde and Butters’ tiny apartment and into a new location again.

They’d gone from rich to poor to objectively middle-class, maybe the nicer end of middle-class. And, for once, Craig knew where he was. “This is Ruby’s place,” he said.

“Yes, good, excellent observation skills there, Craig,” Cartman said. “Hurry up.”

As if summoned by his observation, Ruby walked past them with a bowl of carrots in one hand and a platter of warm rolls in the other, coming from the kitchen and going into the dining room by way of the front hall. Cartman followed her, and Craig followed Cartman.

He saw his little sister a few times a year, and they were always short, hurried visits. It wasn’t that he didn’t adore his sister, only that she always wanted to talk about the past and the good old days that didn’t seem so good when he looked back himself. But it suddenly felt like a long time since he’d really looked at Ruby, and now that he did, it occurred to Craig how much she looked like their mother.

“Your sister’s kind of hot,” Cartman said, and Craig was glad that even though his hand went through door handles and glasses, he could still land a punch on a fellow ghost.

In the dining room, there were five places set. Karen was just putting out the glasses, Kenny beside her popping the top off of a bottle of wine. A grocery store brand, for sure.

“Who are these people?” Cartman asked. The question caught Craig off-guard; he thought these ghosts knew everything.

“Karen, my sister’s partner,” he said.

“Your sister-in-law?”

“Yeah. And her brother Kenny. We all went to school together. She has another brother…”

On cue, Kevin walked through the door from the living room into the dining room. He had a huge fork and knife in his hands. When Karen looked up she started laughing.

“The turkey’s not even out of the oven yet!”

“Well, when it comes out, I’ll be ready for it,” Kevin quipped back.  He flashed a grin, every bit as handsome as his sister was pretty. The McCormicks were dirt poor, but they were good people. The kind of good people who show up in books and movies, the ones who are beautiful inside and out.

“Almost there, almost there,” Ruby said, flipping her long, red hair over her shoulder as she flitted back into the kitchen.

“Who’s the fifth place setting for?” Cartman asked meanly.

“Mistletoe off,” Craig said.

Karen followed Ruby into the kitchen and helped her carry the last of the side dishes out. Cartman made some remark about how the McCormicks probably didn’t know what side dishes looked like before Ruby came along, but Craig ignored him. When he thought about Ruby’s big Christmas dinner, he always pictured more people, friends, family, parties and songs. But their parents were gone, and Karen’s parents were…somewhere. He supposed it was just the girls and their brothers invited.

No place setting looked like it had been added at the last minute, or put out as a formality soon to be pushed aside to make room for food. In fact, Ruby and Karen both took care to move other side dishes or the floral centerpiece to make room for things instead of disturbing one of the plates. They treated the setting like its guest was coming.

The McCormick brothers were less kind. Kenny moved the fifth plate out of the way to make room for the turkey, and Craig could see his sister’s face fall as she reluctantly set the platter down there. Kevin got up and, true to his word, was ready to cut into it.

“You know, I bet if you were here, Ruby would let you cut the turkey,” Cartman said.

“Kevin’s older than I am. He and Kenny were both parent-brothers their whole lives, too, and you figure Kevin did it for two siblings.” Craig shrugged. “Cutting the turkey’s too symbolic for me.”

“Yeah, but it’d be like when the Grinch carves the roast beast.”

Craig glared at him, and Cartman sniffed. When Craig turned his back on him to stand a little closer to the table, Cartman called, “And you’re wrong about the McCormicks.” Craig paused. “Kinny’s the one who took care of everybody. He’s the one who should be carving the turkey.”

“So why doesn’t he?” Craig asked flatly.

“He’s not a vegetarian or anything, but Kinny’s got kind of a thing about carving flesh.”

That was apparently all Cartman had to say, and the narrator doesn’t wish to elaborate either.

After Kevin had cut turkey for everyone’s plates, Ruby asked him to put the turkey platter on the little side table near the kitchen.

“What if we want seconds?” Kenny joked, his smile not quite meeting his eyes.

“Then you can get up for them,” Karen jumped in. Kevin obediently put the turkey on the side table, and Ruby rearranged the fifth place setting. Kenny looked at it for a long time while the rest of the table passed around side dishes.

“Just put the turkey on the table,” Kenny said. An awkward pause hit the table for a split-second before Karen loudly asked Kevin to pass the butter. Kenny looked up and met Ruby’s eyes dead-on. “He’s not coming.”

Now silence fully took over the table. Ruby had fair skin like their mother, like both their parents, and it grew splotchy under Kenny’s stare. Craig balled his hands into fists.

“Don’t talk to my sister like that,” he snapped.

“Still can’t hear you, Craig,” Cartman called from where the turkey was set up.

“Did I mistletoe-ing ask you?”

“He might,” Ruby said stiffly. “I don’t want him to think we forgot about him.”

“I assure you, he’s not worried about that at all,” Kenny said. The scowl on Craig’s face sunk in even more deeply. “When are you going to stop pretending he’s coming, Ruby?”

“Well…never, Kenny, he’s my brother. He’s the only family I’ve got.” Ruby exchanged a quick look with Karen, who reached over and gave her brother’s hand a squeeze that looked less affectionate and more of a warning.

“We’re Karen’s brothers and we manage,” Kenny said. Karen squeezed again, this time her knuckles going white. Kenny actually winced, which made Craig feel a little better.

“He’s always invited,” Ruby said, her voice biting. “He’s always welcome, and whenever he comes through that door he’ll be let in with open arms. If you don’t like it, there’s the mistletoe-ing door, Kenny.”

“All right, all right,” Karen said softly, reaching out with her other hand to grab Ruby’s hand. Both Kenny and Ruby winced, Karen’s white-knuckled grip on each of them not matching her serene face. “Come on, you guys, it’s Christmas. And my mouth’s been watering for this turkey all day. Let’s eat!”

Cartman let out a long, aggravated sigh. “Okay, hotshot, that’s it. My time’s up.”

“What do you mean?” Craig asked.

“Let’s do the bullet points, shall we?” Cartman said, snapping his fingers. Ruby’s apartment began to fade into blackness around them. “Your ex still thinks you’re not so bad to look at, but you’re going to have to prove you’re not going to choose paperwork and T.V. dogs over him again. Raise your mistletoe-ing assistant’s pay, you were almost brothers that one time, sort of, or at least you said that once. Don’t fire someone who's working his butt off for you, and raise his pay, too, while you’re at it. And go to you mistletoe-ing sister’s mistletoe-ing house for mistletoe-ing Christmas.” Cartman heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Think you can manage that?”

“Yeah…” Craig put his hands in his pockets and looked around, but the shadow of Christmas Day was all but gone now. “Yeah, I can manage that.”

“Good,” Cartman said, pushing up his sleeve and sticking out his arm. “Because it’s three o’clock, and your last appointment is up.”

“And who might that be?” Craig snarked.

“That would be me,” rasped a voice behind him.

Craig blinked and Cartman was gone, and when he turned, the only thing he could see was Ruby’s dining room table, the feast gone, and a single chair in front of it. The person seated in it was little more than a dark cloak, a tiny green question mark springing from the hood pulled over his face. Leaning back in his seat, the third ghost grinned over at Craig. This was, if the narrator might add in a humble and perfectly unbiased way, the handsomest of the three ghosts. Totally unbiased. The narrator’s identity is a perfect secret to the reader, just as this ghost’s identity was a perfect secret to Craig.

“Kenny?” Craig asked.

“Dang it, Tucker. All right. You’ve met Christmas Past and Present. Let’s see if you can figure out who I am.” The hooded figure flipped his hood back, and Kenny’s blond hair and blue eyes emerged from the darkness. “Sorry, dude, can’t wait all day. I’m the Ghost of Christmas _Future_ , and let me tell you, you and I are going on a hell of a ride.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re from the future?” Craig asked, deadpan.

“Nah, just a ghost. But, hey, I’m pretty easy on the eyes, right?”

Craig shook his head. “All right. I get it. I…lost sight of some things. Important things. But why do you need to show me the future? What can I possibly learn from something that hasn’t happened yet?”

“You can learn that not every bad thing that happens is permanent,” Kenny said. “You know what you have to change now, but maybe you need a little push to know why. What’s really at stake here.”

The cryptic language didn’t improve Craig’s mood, even if he had to admit that this ghost was more tolerable than the last one. “How long am I stuck with you for?”

Kenny rolled his eyes. “Relax, dude, the feeling’s mutual. We’ve only got one stop, and then I’m kicking your mistletoe back where it belongs”

“One stop? Sounds perfect.” Craig gestured emptily. “Lead on.”

Kenny’s expression changed for a second, some shadow of knowledge that Craig didn’t like. Before Craig could say a word, though, Kenny pulled the hood back up, and this time it really cast a shadow over his face, much darker than before. He pointed over Craig’s shoulder, and the motion alone was enough to practically force Craig to turn. From pitch black, he was suddenly thrust into the blinding white of snow and grey morning skies. The sunlight reflecting off the snow was so strong he had to shield his eyes.

Kenny glided past him, nothing more than a purple-black cloak. Craig sighed and followed. “So, what are you showing me?”

No answer.

“Kenny?” As Craig’s feet crunched in the snow below, his eyes adjusted, and he was able to look around. This wasn’t a place he’d been to before, and not a place he’d want to visit any time soon. They were walking through a cemetary.

A few rows down, Kenny had come to a stop. Amidst he white snow, his cloak seemed even more a shadow, like the grim reaper walking among his victims. Craig followed slowly. When he was within a few feet of Kenny, Kenny pointed to the grave in front of him. Craig stood beside him and looked down at it.

“This grave?” he asked. Kenny nodded. Craig could hardly make out his face under the hood. “What about it?” Kenny continued to point. “Seriously, you’re not going to talk to me?” More pointing. “All right, fine.” Craig knelt down and put out a hand to brush away the snow from the grave marker, but then he hesitated. “Kenny, how far in the future is this?”

Kenny had lowered his hand now that Craig was looking at the grave, but he still didn’t answer.

“Did you hit your quota? No more talking today?” Craig asked. After an unresponsive moment, he continued, “Is this ten years? Twenty?” Kenny shook his head. “More?” Another shake. “Less.” A nod. “Five years?” Shake.

Craig readjusted his legs beneath him to be more comfortable and looked up, glad that Kenny’s stupid cloak blocked some of the sun.

“Is this next Christmas?”

Kenny nodded, and Craig turned back to the grave, only to pause again.

“Are you telling me that I’m going to die next Christmas?” he asked softly. “That if I don’t change my ways, that’s it, lights out?”

Kenny’s hand appeared in his peripheral vision, pointing again. Craig swallowed heavily. He wished he could say that he wasn’t afraid of Kenny McCormick wrapped up in a bedsheet and not talking to him, but mortality is a funny thing. Even the best poker faces waver before it.

“You said that this wasn’t absolutely the future, right? Just a possibility.” Craig forced lightness into his voice, but it trembled nonetheless. Kenny’s hand beside him twitched horribly, inhumanly, and Craig was reminded that he wasn’t with Kenny, he was with a ghost. He exhaled slowly. “Fine.”

Pulling the cuff of his suit jacket up over his palm, Craig brushed the freshly-fallen snow away from the grave marker. When the name appeared before his eyes, he jumped to his feet.

_Tweek Tweak_

“ _What_?” Craig turned to the ghost and was thrown off yet again when, instead of the grim reaper, it was Kenny’s face from beneath the shadowy hood.

“See, that’s the thing, man,” Kenny said, expression hardened. Identical to how it had appeared over Ruby’s Christmas dinner. “When we pull the Scrooge redemption act, usually it’s an older guy who’s really got a life to look back on, right? And you’re so young. Yeah, you’re a jerk, but you’re not beyond salvation yet.” Kenny’s attention turned to the grave, and his eyes softened. “But it’s not about saving Scrooge this time. It’s not about you. It’s about the people affected by you. Christmas carols aren’t about saving the individual, they’re about the chain reaction that happens when one Ebenezer Scrooge remembers what Christmas is all about.”

Craig could feel himself shaking. “What are you saying?”

“Well, I could show you what you’re up to a year from now, two, five, ten years. Further down the road. You’re probably still working, you’re probably still alone, and your sister is probably waiting in vain for you to come to Christmas dinner. You’ve got a boring-as-hell life ahead of you, and not the good kind of drama-free, nice life. You just suck.” Kenny took a few steps closer to the grave and knelt down next to it, brushing rogue patches of snow Craig had missed in his upset. “The ghosts could’ve come to you fifty years from now. But if we didn’t come today, if we didn’t visit you on this particular Christmas, then he’s the one who pays for it.”

“I don’t understand,” Craig managed through gritted teeth. “Tweek’s the strongest person I know. He’s got a better heart than anybody, he always does what’s right. How could this happen because of me?”

“Heart attack,” Kenny said. “That’s how it’ll happen. All that coffee’s not good for you, man. All that caffeine? Token and Jimmy know. They look out for him. But not all the time. He’ll be alone in his apartment when it happens, and by the time anybody finds him, it’ll be too late.”

Craig couldn’t help the hand that went to his chest, clutching at his dress shirt. “No.”

“That’s the funny thing about death,” Kenny said softly. “It’s the worst. It sucks and it hurts and it’s lonely. But better you than them. You’d always rather it was you than someone you love.”

“We have to go back,” Craig said, grabbing Kenny’s cloak. It was heavier than it looked. “I have to—”

“Yeah,” Kenny said. “You do.” He put his hood up again, and it was like another persona entirely came over him. Craig wondered if this were what the ghost looked like all the time, and he selectively used Kenny’s face to speak.

The ghost grabbed the edge of his cloak and threw it up over Craig’s head, and the next thing Craig knew, he was falling into darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

When Craig jolted awake, he was lying on the floor in his apartment, pale sunlight just beginning to filter through the window. He sat bolt upright and scrambled to his feet. After a moment of touching his arms and then the couch and realizing he didn’t go through them, he searched for his phone.

It was five past five in the morning, December twenty-fifth.

“Christmas Day,” he whispered. “I haven’t missed it.”

He ran to his room to get dressed and struggled to find something that wasn’t a black or grey suit. He came across a royal blue sweater in the back of his closet that must have been a gift from Ruby, so like the blue jackets he seemed to wear his whole childhood. Thankfully it fit, looking maybe even a bit baggy. Which, the narrator wishes to say, made it seem cozier. And Craig hadn’t been cozy in a long time.

The next thing he did was go to his phone. As he spent quite a bit of time on the phone, your faithful narrator will summarize. He called Human Resources to leave them a message that Stan Marsh was submitting a request regarding his paycheck that should be prioritized immediately, and that a raise should also take effect. And that Clyde and Butters should both get raises. And, while he was at it, his whole department deserved them. He called the president of the network to discuss reinstating the annual end-of-year bonus, and when the disgruntled president asked if he had any idea what time it was, Craig insisted the bonuses be taken out of his own salary.

He called Clyde, which is a nice enough call that perhaps the reader should like to see it.

“Craig?” Clyde yawned into the phone. “Craig, it’s barely past seven.”

“Clyde,” Craig said, his voice terribly quiet. “You didn’t give Butters the paperwork I told you to, did you?” The line went silent. “I didn’t think so. Thank goodness for that, Clyde. Don’t. I’m not firing him.”

“You’re—what?” Clyde managed, sounding more awake by the second.

“I’m not firing him, Clyde, I acted in haste.” Craig took a deep breath. “Listen, I…I don’t say it enough, but I appreciate everything you do for me. You save me from myself a lot.”

Clyde chuckled, then quickly stifled the sound as if he weren’t sure it was okay.

“Merry Christmas, Clyde,” he said.

“Merry…merry Christmas, Craig,” Clyde replied.

If the reader is curious, Craig didn’t say anything about the raises because he wanted to see the look on Clyde’s face when he found out. And maybe, possibly, just a little bit, because he wanted one of Clyde’s world-famous bear hugs.

The next call was one he was hoping was the right number, the same one from all that time before. When Tweek answered, it wasn’t only a relief to hear his voice again but to hear him say, “Craig?”

“Tweek. Listen, I…after I saw you last night, I…”

“I know,” Tweek said.

“I had to—”

“I know.”

“Because I—”

“Me, too.”

Craig paused for half a breath. “I’m sorry. I should have put you first.”

Tweek was quiet for a few seconds. "Yeah. You should have."

"I'm going to. From now on, I promise."

A sharp breath. "Craig..."

"I mean it. Running into you wasn't a coincidence, it was a sign." The narrator can confirm this. "A sign that I needed to get it together and get my life back on track."

Another pause. "Do you...I mean...do you want to come over?"

Craig did.

He wrote down Tweek's address and took the subway to his apartment, something he hadn't done in ages. He hardly got a chance to knock before Tweek had the door open and let him in. "I was just about to put on a pot of coffee," Tweek said.

"No, don't do that!" Craig said. At Tweek's wide eyes, he added, "It's...not good for you."

"You sound like Jimmy and Token."

Tweek made hot chocolate instead, and they sat on the couch to talk about their lives, what they were up to, where they were going. Craig found that for all his so-called success, he had very little to report, while Tweek had traveled and volunteered and learned new languages. In the five years they'd been apart, Tweek had lived a lifetime.

Tweek evaluated him over the rim of his mug. "You're different."

"Good different?" Craig asked slowly. Tweek must have been remembering the last time he told Craig he was different, because he agreed right away. Craig smiled down into the ring of chocolate at the bottom of his mug.

"What's gotten into you?" Tweek asked.

"Christmas," Craig said. "Christmas and seeing you again."

The narrator would like to mention that although that is a very smooth answer, it was actually honest. That's just how Craig talks. But, really, it was a good answer. Tweek let him sit a little closer after that, and lean a little closer, and finally kiss a few times. And a few more. And once more for good luck.

"I'm going to Ruby's for Christmas," Craig murmured, his nose buried in Tweek's impossibly soft hair. "Come with me."

"Okay."

Ruby was excited to see her brother, but, as Craig himself put it, she was more excited to see Tweek. The Tucker siblings let him go in first, and Ruby grabbed her brother by the back of his jacket, shooting him a look. "When did you and Tweek get back together."

"About an hour before we got here."

Ruby laughed like he was kidding and pushed him into the living room where the McCormicks were already stretched out. Kevin and Kenny wore identical shocked expressions when Craig walked in, but they covered it up well after the first second. Shaking Kenny's hand in greeting was surreal considering Craig's most recent memory of him.

"I'm glad you're here," Kenny said, and Craig knew he meant it.

"Me, too," he said.

And it was true. He was glad to be alive, glad to be at his sister's for Christmas dinner. Glad that the next day he'd be surprising his employees with the pay and respect they deserved, especially Clyde. They might even be friends again, Craig thought, which the narrator can most certainly confirm.

He was glad when Kevin cut the turkey, and glad that when he bumped into Karen between the kitchen and hallway, he hugged her, since she was basically his second sister. It felt good to be around people, around his family, around the table. Best of all, it felt good to have Tweek's hand brushing against his under the table. The narrator can confirm a happily ever after there, as well. Craig was better than his word, better than the ghosts even expected. He kept the spirit of Christmas all year round and was always thought of as a kind friend, a kind employer, and a kind person.

"Well, it's been a crazy year," Kenny said, holding up his glass of wine, "but, hey, we're all still here."

The table would drink to that.


End file.
